"Today will be a good day Trudy, you don't need to be scowling like that," I said to Trudy with a mocking tone, the girl will age faster than many here if she continues like this, "Grace, for you it's simple, you just have to walk around in that blue body of yours and think you're Snow-white, instead I, I have to watch over everyone's safety."
I just nodded, not wanting to refute what she had said. I may not like armed idiots, but I understood that they were necessary. "Today we will fly to the Floating Mountains, I ordered a mobile liaison to be mobilized in Sector 26; we will work comfortably there, away from all this commotion."
The base had been restless the last few days, the attacks from the Na'vi clans closer to the mining bases had made Quaritch very volatile lately, many times it made our work with the Na'vi difficult, it even prevented me from taking my avatar to school.
At first, it was manageable, but then it became difficult to continue working that way, so using my weak control here, I had a mobile link set up for us in the Hallelujah Mountains, in a sector still under investigation.
And well, that's how it had come to this. In addition to myself and Trudy, Corporal Lyle Wainfleet would accompany us as ballistic support, as I liked to call it, along with three other avatar drivers to accompany us.
The idea is to take our avatars first to the site, observe the new environment, do research and learn about the ecosystem, Once there are no signs of imminent danger, we would go with our human bodies.
"All set, Grace, we can go now," Trudy's reminder made me put my thoughts aside, and then I climbed into the Samson, followed by the others on the trip.
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"You should see their faces," Trudy's sneer transmitted over the ship's transmitters was heard, and I couldn't help but laugh, if I, with all my knowledge and the many times I had been able to see such beauty amazed me every time, I couldn't even think about what was going through the boys' minds, since they had only arrived on Pandora two weeks ago, and this would be their first expedition outside the safety of the base.
"We have officially entered the vortex, my controls are crazy", that fact was something that had kept me up many nights, and after more than fifteen years of research, I still couldn't figure out what was causing it, electromagnetic interference, electronic radio frequency jammers due to Polyphemus, or maybe even the intervention of the supernatural entity of the Na'vi; Eywa.
Whatever it was, he had not even been able to scratch the surface of what was causing such a phenomenon, which rendered even satellite readings useless, as readings, images, and videos were distorted to the point of being unusable.
It was a relief that at least a small portion, known as Sector 26, could be monitored.
After a few minutes of flying blind, we were approaching the site when Corporal Lyle's alarmed voice alerted us, "Is that a Thanator!" The mere thought of seeing one made me turn my neck quickly, and I might charge it later, but I wanted to see if it was indeed one.
Thanator were Pandora's jungle creatures, their physiology was adapted to hunting and living in the jungle, and while they were very good climbers, a Thanator had never been documented to hang around near the Mountains.
But when I set out to observe, it was not the Thanator that surprised me, but the two Na'vi that were next to the animal, I could not see them very well, but they were young, one older than the other, maybe between five or seven years, and both were close to the Thanator, as if it were a Direhorse and not a Thanator.
They saw us, and for a few seconds, my gaze met the older one, until he made his Thanator leave, carrying the two Na'vi with him on his back.
"Good lord, they're bigger than I thought."
"Yeah, and they're terrifying, what a terror."
As my fellow Avatar project members joined in a discussion about what they had witnessed, I became immersed in my thoughts and what I was supposed to know about Pandora.
Thanator was not a social creature; they were solitary by nature and only met for mating or territory control fights. They were much like the extinct Bengal tigers that once inhabited the earth.
But now, a Thanator was linked to a Na'vi, I could see the Tsaheylu made, meaning they could be linked just like the Direhorse or the Banshee, something unheard of, if I could only investigate that connection, I would certainly go a long way in my research.
"Trudy, are there any documented clans settled nearby?" I asked the girl, who as the one in charge of being our transport, should know a lot about the topology, locations, and territory distribution of the clans near the RDA bases, so she was certainly the one who knew the most about that.
"No doctor Grace, the closest clans to the base are the Omaticaya and the Kekunan, but in this specific sector there is no clan documentation, the closest to this position are the Omaticaya and the Aryna, but the first one is thirty kilometers away, and the second one is fifty kilometers away."
I frowned, none of that fit, two young people could not be that far from their clan, because if they belonged to one of these two clans, then they were very far from home, although maybe it was about their initiation rites, the Na'vi traveled this far into the mountains to choose their Banshee, but it still wasn't quite right.
It would have been a group, and not just two youngsters, "although I can't say for sure, remember we are in the vortex, there is an area of more than three hundred square kilometers unmapped", I looked up, looking at Trudy, and she looked back at me through the rearview mirror of the ship, we said nothing, but it was clear that if there were one or more clans in these surroundings, then we were facing clans never documented before.
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"Masano, Ma Sempul!" Ro'a ran quickly toward our parents, who were alarmed the moment they saw him running toward them urgently. "Sawtute (people of the sky), we saw them in the Ayram alusìng (hallelujah mountains), they were flying on one of their lifeless birds, and they saw us."
Our father was immediately angry, the presence of humans in Pandora was known by many clans, years of skirmishes and conflicts between the Na'vi and Humans had caused that there was no friendly relationship between both sides, added to the deforestation, the damage to humans to the forest and the lack of concern of humans to Pandora as a whole.
It produced a hatred from the Na'vi towards the humans, but for some reason, in all the years since the arrival of the humans to Pandora, they had never made contact with the clan, as far as he knew, the clan was more than a hundred kilometers away from the location of the humans, which could have caused the null encounter between the two. Unlike other clans, such as the Omaticaya, the Aryna, or other clans of the plains and the eastern sea.
But now, the sky demons had come to the clan, and my father could not be anything but angry about it. "I will reinforce the warrior patrols in those areas. You can't go back alone; if you want to go there, you will have to go accompanied. The sky demons are vile, and I won't let anything happen to you two."
I wanted to protest, but decided to keep quiet. I would gain nothing by saying that I would return to the place from one means to another, while I knew that we were now on opposite sides, the presence of Na'vi on that airship was enough to at least know that I was not openly hostile to all Na'vi. So I wanted to take a chance.
So accepting my father's order, or at least in appearance, I set out to go to the place where the Angtsìk and Talioang were grazing.
The herds of both were in a remote part of the Kelutral, for the safety of the smaller ones and the tranquility of the large specimens, about a kilometer from the big tree, and even then, the edge of the circle formed by the floating rocks was still far away, which spoke of the huge place.
So much so that there was even a lake that glowed at night, this being the source of water for the entire clan, as several tributaries and small streams flowed out of the lake and ran through the whole place.
"Wait here, boy, I can't take you any further or you will frighten our friends," I spoke to Fang, getting off him and cutting across the Tsaheylu, with Fang protesting a little, but obeying and staying on the spot.
"I won't be long, I'll be back in a few minutes," I assured him, walking over to the herds, both were away from each other, the Talioang's was three kilometers from here, but I wanted was to get closer to the Angtsìk's, and hopefully find out more about what had happened that day with Fang, something that had been showing up a few times with other animals, although as I had only done it with the Pa'li, animals with which I had already done Tsaheylu, I did not know if it was due to the link, or whatever happened to me, so I was willing to know more about all this, and what better than with the Angtsìk, animals that although they were a little used to us, none had done Tsaheylu with any Na'vi.
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